Dedicated to product reviews of Kleer-based wireless earbuds, wireless headphones, and wireless speakers. All products based on Kleer technology deliver CD-quality, uncompressed, lossless, digital stereo audio. Kleer-based wireless earbuds, headphones, speakers can be paired with other Kleer-based transmitters. Up to four people can listen to one Kleer-based transmitter at a time.

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Sunday, December 11, 2011

What happened to WireFreeHiFi? Who cares, they still sell the Opera S5 wireless earbuds

I stop paying attention for just a little bit and the world changes around me.

WireFreeHiFi, aka Dipecomm, used to have a ton of Kleer-based wireless audio products. Now they're just down to the Digifi Opera S5 and the CyFi bicycle speaker. Both great products, but WireFreeHiFi used to have other products, my favorite being the one that essentially turned any MP3 speaker into an Apple wireless speaker. How? Well they had a dongle (transmitter) that fitted onto your iPod/iPhone and then the receiver component fitted into the cradle of your MP3 speaker. Then you could walk around your room, change tracks, etc. without the wires. I wonder if Apple finally caught up to them, that is, the Apple legal team did. Who knows, but the good news is that they're still selling the Opera S5 wireless earbuds via Amazon UK.

Why is this good news?

Cause you can purchase the Opera S5 wireless earbuds that also come with the Apple-certified transmitter. Now the transmitter might be a bit old, that is, not too sure what iPods it still works with. But as I recall, the transmitter uses the Apple 30-pin transmitter so it plugs into practically all Apple devices. It's just you might get an error message, but just close that message and it should still work. As always, do due diligence and ask the retailer WireFreeHiFi what Apple devices it still works with (iPod, iPhone, iPad).

Here's the kicker about Kleer technology that a lot of people forget about or don't use. All Kleer-based technology is interoperable. That means all the Kleer-based wireless headphones/earbuds/earphones/speakers and transmitters can all "talk" to each other.

For example, you can use the AKG K 840 KL Kleer-based transmitter to deliver music to Sennheiser Kleer-based headphones. You need to "pair" them together but this is a relatively easy process and the directions should be in the manuels of pairing extra wireless receivers (headphones, earbuds) to one transmitter/dongle. But in this case, instead of associating four Sennheiser Kleer-based wireless headphones to one transmitter, you're going to add the AKG K 840 KL wireless headphones, or the Opera S5, or the new Sync by 50.

NOTE: You can only associate to a maximum of four wireless headphones, but those Kleer-based headphones can be any manufacturer. And, another note, the Sennheiser MX W1 true wireless earbuds (discontinued sadly) count as two as each earbud takes a spot.

So?

To make a short story long, you can purchase the Arcam rWand iPod Wireless Stream Device that uses Kleer technology to stream to the Arcam rCube wireless speaker.

But it costs
£49.95 (approx $78.12 USD) on Amazon UK. Someone is also trying to sell it on Amazon UK for £69.95 (approx $109.41 USD), but ignore them.

Or, instead of buying the Arcam rWand, purchase the Opera S5 wireless earbuds on Amazon UK and you get a Kleer-based Apple 30-pin transmitter that can be associated with any Kleer-based receiver (headphones/earbuds/earphones/speakers) for £79.95 (approx $125.05 USD) and wireless earbuds.

Just saying, look for the value, and understand that Kleer-based products are interoperable: transmitters (dongles) can be associated to other manufacturer's Kleer-based receivers (wireless headphones/earbuds/earphones/speakers).